Teaching

This fall (2011) I am teaching BUS 456/656 Social Media and Virtual Communities, for which I use experiential activities on a Drupal platform.  This knowledge commons is located at commons.dominict.net.

 

My teaching focuses on successful systems design and implementation.  I am one of only a few professors with two approved elective courses, project management and social media, both of which consistently get high rankings by both BBAs and MBAs [daytime and exec].  In Project Management I teach various risk management techniques and tools, primarily through lectures and projects with real clients in the field (which earns my project management course the Management Practice designation as part of the MBA core).  In my social media course, students learn to manage and represent social media data via open source platforms such as Drupal then use it to develop business intelligence with real clients.  The consistent course design aspect between the two courses is a field client project.  I believe in applied lessons with real clients as a good teaching mechanism. I can prepare and teach other classes in the IS curriculum too.

 

Is there really such a big difference between operations management and information systems skills? Not really for me.  I am a systems designer.  The thought process of decomposing a systems context, identifying what needs to be done and how to apply technologies, and planning and implementing a solution is very similar across both fields.  Both ultimately focus on the improvement of businesses for better efficiency, productivity, profitability, and competitiveness. I teach classes in business improvement. I am equally comfortable seeing these courses as "operations management" or "management information systems" classes and tailoring the content to emphasize the topics typical to either pedagogical root.

 

I have been teaching the Process and Systems Management course at Emory. It is a large course involving hands-on interaction in real projects with businesses.